Technology Summit Makes School-College Connection

Small teams of teachers and education
professors gathered here recently to ponder how to use technology more
effectively.

They also got to know each other better.

Getting acquainted was a priority of the two-day conference, held
Sept. 20-21 at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, because the
team members, who in many cases barely knew one another, were about to
embark on nine-month collaborative projects.

To assemble the teams of four to six members, the National Council
for Accreditation of Teacher Education invited selected education
professors in 11 states to recruit members of their own faculty and
teachers from a nearby high school.

"Those are people who frankly don't spend enough time together,"
said Peggy O'Brien, the vice president for education at the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, which paid for the conference.

A similar regional conference took place in Pittsburgh last spring,
and the final Ernest L. Boyer Technology Summits for Educators will be
held next year in Los Angeles and Dallas.

Arthur E. Wise, the president of Washington-based NCATE, called the
formula for the summits "a deliberate strategy based on research and
experience."

Undaunted by the teams' sketchy two-page proposals, the Nashville
organizers sought to build momentum with a blend of big-picture
speeches, panel discussions, and demonstrations of educational
software.

What many participants seemed to want most was guidance in how
technology could help them cope with changes in standards and course
content, in evaluation, and in expectations for student behavior.

The teams will be able to discuss such issues in electronic
forums--through e-mail and the World Wide Web--sponsored by the CPB for
the next nine months, as well as exchange ideas and progress reports
with the teams from other regions.

The CPB will award $5,000 grants next month to teams whose proposals
pass a peer-review committee.

One team brought two professors from Armstrong Atlantic State
University in Savannah, Ga., together with three teachers from the
city's Grove High School.

They proposed a follow-up project that would use teleconferencing
equipment at both schools to let pre-service teachers peer into real
classes, while encouraging high schoolers to communicate with students
and teachers at the university.

"We wanted to use our lab as a springboard," said Janice Kelly, who
teaches English and runs the computer laboratory at Grove High.

The team also sought to include the university in the high school's
partnership with Savannah-based Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. By visiting
corporate facilities and "shadowing" employees, professors and
pre-service teachers might better understand the skills needed by
career-bound students.

The link with Gulfstream could be enriched, the team later decided,
by matching the real concerns of engineers with high school projects in
applied science or math. Students in different subjects could visit
different Gulfstream departments.

James W. Pellegrino, the dean of Peabody College, admitted that his
goal as host of the conference was partly to showcase the education
college's year-old Learning Technology Center.

The center is housed in the stately Social and Religious Building,
built in 1915 but gutted and turned into a high-tech training facility
that opened last year.

The facility is also the center of an extensive effort to develop
educational software. Faculty members and researchers from many parts
of the university help create videodisc simulations that let children
become scientists and mathematicians--while keeping teachers in
charge.

Other simulations give prospective teachers a taste of what real
classrooms are like.

The simulations should not replace real outings, but give students
background to make real experiences more meaningful, said John
Bransford, a co-director of the center.

As part of the "Scientists in Action" series, middle school students
become medical detectives in the 1970s and try to find the cause of
sickness in a group of urban children. Students use a computerized
array of maps and analytical tools to trace the cause: lead poisoning
from paint chips.

--ANDREW TROTTER

Vol. 16, Issue 05

Related Stories

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see our issues page on Professional
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